We hosted a lunch and dinner awareness event for Grameen in April. That event generated enough interest for Grameen to help create a volunteer organization with Susan as head coordinator. We kicked off the volunteer organization with a recent Saturday meeting. Based on a my experience in consulting and at my earlier Asian American organization in the Bay Area called M Society West, here’s what we did to organize the volunteers:

We handed out to everyone a pen and a pad of sticky notes. We asked them to write down, on their own, any ideas they have for our volunteer organization, 1 idea/note. Ideas could be big or small. This took about 15 minutes. Then, still without discussion, everyone stuck his/her notes on the wall - and here’s the trick - categorized them with other people’s ideas. We gave no advice on what the categories should be. Amazingly, after a flurry of initial confusion, the categories self-formed.

Once everyone had sat down again (and quieted down after all the excitement), we gave each category a name, and asked everyone on their own to pick their top 5 categories. They had 5 points and could spend on the categories any way they wanted - 5 on 1; 2, 2, 1; 1 for 5 different categories). We tallied up the votes, and basically had a rational and democratic vote of the most important things to do as an organization, in a prioritized list format, which we then can now form committees around.

I‘m helping my friend Peggy with JUCCCE. Hopefully we can have a fundraiser/awareness event in mid-November in Shanghai.

Joint U.S.-China Cooperation on Clean Energy (JUCCCE)

Our rapidly changing environment calls for a dramatic change in the way we use and produce energy.

JUCCCE is a non-profit organization focused bringing help to the area of greatest concern- and greatest opportunity for impact- China. Vice Minister of Construction Qiu BaoXing says, “We are at war with energy and China is our common battlefront.” Our initiatives are aimed at helping China accelerate 30 years of world experience and development into 10 years. JUCCCE advisors makeup a network of multi-disciplinary leaders in energy efficiency and clean energy supply within China and the US.